


Surprise

by Setcheti



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, April Showers 2015, Bonding, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, One Shot, Surprises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3719191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The mission had, as usual, gone completely FUBAR. But this time Rodney is the one who has to fix it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surprise

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came to me one day after I noticed that David Hewlett had developed what I call ‘Daniel Jackson Syndrome’, because Michael Shanks was the first actor I really noticed it in. The writers keep writing the character as wimpy and physically helpless compared to other characters on the show, but the actor – probably trying to keep in shape during the hiatus or prepare for another part – has bulked up to the point that the characterization becomes ridiculous. (This was also the inspiration behind the [Finders Keepers series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/237150), in case anyone wondered.)

As usual, their latest mission had gone completely FUBAR. 

This time, however, Rodney was trying to deal with the FUBAR part on his own, because his team leader Major Sheppard had been captured by some kind of non-Genii soldiers on this backwater little tree-planet that was supposed to be uninhabited. Rodney had been off answering the call of nature at the time, but he’d heard Sheppard yell and had, for a wonder, remembered enough of what the man had tried to drum into him to take cover and only creep close enough to see what was going on. 

He’d seen soldiers, and Sheppard, and guns. And knives, because the knives were being waved around and they were flashing in the sun. He’d watched the soldiers march Sheppard off…and he’d made the decision to follow them, to at least see where they were going before he figured out what to do next. Letting them take Sheppard while he himself went running back to the ‘Gate hadn’t seemed like a very good idea, since then he and whatever help he was able to get wouldn’t know where to start looking for the major or his captors. 

Trying to follow them was nerve-wracking for him – moving quietly had never been one of his strong points – but they were making a lot of noise themselves, apparently very happy to have a prisoner, so they didn’t notice him. After about an hour they reached a dilapidated-looking building and dragged Sheppard into it, and then Rodney was left wondering what he should do. It wasn’t a very big building, so the three soldiers he’d seen might actually be all of them. They didn’t appear to have any cameras or shields or any other tech on the outside of the building, and there were only two very small windows he could see, so if he chose to get closer they probably wouldn’t know he was there. 

If he chose to get closer. But what would he do if he did? He couldn’t just jump in the open door and start firing his P-90, because Sheppard was in there. He couldn’t just walk in and try to force them to let Sheppard go at gunpoint, because standoffs like that usually didn’t turn out too well for anyone. He was going to have to go back to the ‘Gate for help… 

That was when he heard the yell – Sheppard, it had to be. His blood turned to ice. They hadn’t just take Sheppard prisoner, they were hurting him. Torturing him? Maybe. Killing him? Maybe that too. Rodney slumped against the tree he was hiding behind. He couldn’t leave now, he couldn’t. But what could he do? He was a scientist, not a soldier! What could a scientist do out here in the middle of nowhere with no resources? 

There were some claw marks dug into the bark of the tree, and they caught his attention. Maybe he could drive an animal in there to distract them? He snorted lightly; that was a cartoon plan, not a real-life plan, and it wasn’t like the animal was here or like he’d have any idea how to catch it even if it was. Rodney reached out to touch the scratches…and then drew his hand back before he could, staring at it. He turned the hand over like it belonged to someone else. Calluses, on his fingers from holding a trigger, on his palms from doing whatever else. He rubbed his fingers together, feeling the thickened skin in surprise, and when he stretched his fingers back out he saw something else. 

His hand was big. Not his fingers, which were as long and sensitive as he knew they should be, but the ‘body’ of his hand looked squarely capable. Had it ever looked that way before? He didn’t think so. And his wrist above it…was it wider? He made to turn his hand again, and muscles flexed all the way up his arm. 

Muscles? 

Rodney clenched his fist. Muscles again, rippling up his wrist and arm from his contracted hand. His arm was wider too. A determined, experimental tensing…and more muscles reacted. Biceps bunched, swelled under his uniform sleeve, and then subsided like a tide. He could feel the muscles in his chest and shoulders contracting too. 

Rodney McKay, supergenius, had been working for the government for most of his adult life. Which meant he had been working with, or at least near, lots of military men. Tough men. Strong men. Men who knew fifteen ways to kill someone, only a few of which involved actually touching the person with more than one hand. Men who made Rodney feel small and weak and ineffectual. Manly men. 

Trying another experiment, Rodney straightened his back and did something he’d never done before in his life: He flexed. More muscles responded. Impressively, even, and Rodney’s mind raced over the implications of that even as he cursed himself for not having made the connection before. 

Antarctica was a very boring place – for most people. Rodney McKay wasn’t most people. He’d immersed himself in Ancient technology and wormhole physics with nary a break until Beckett had noticed and insisted that Rodney drag himself away from his toys at least once a day or else be sent home. Rodney had already known that he couldn’t win an argument with the Scottish doctor, but he had been able to win the caveat for himself that he could take this mandatory ‘playtime’ at any time of the day or night he liked. “I don’t care if you only need four hours of sleep a night,” Beckett had scolded him. “You’ve got eight comin’ to you, so if you can’t sleep through them then you’d best be findin’ something else to do instead. Preferably somethin’ exercise related.” 

After a quick review of his limited options, Rodney had chosen weight training. The fact that he had chosen to do it in the middle of the night rather than by day when the city’s makeshift ‘gym’ was full of Marines meant his new hobby stayed a secret. For a while, anyway. At one point the schedules had all been changed, so he’d reluctantly gone down to the gym knowing it would be full of Marines but unwilling to stop his daily – and surprisingly relaxing – routine. He’d kept his eyes down as he’d warmed up, and as he’d gone through his usual round of weight machines, and then he’d dragged his spotter bar out to the bench press in the center of the room and done his best to not look at anyone or listen to any comments. And so he hadn’t heard any. 

Because…there hadn’t been any. At first. The Marines had initially ignored him, although the ones closest to whichever machine he’d been on at the time had come away surprised by the weight setting he was using. But the bench press…several of them had found his invented spotter bar a few weeks earlier and used it themselves, and knowing how much weight it was capable of holding there were a few snickers at the thought of one of the science staff even needing it at all. But then Rodney had loaded his bar with weights, gotten into position and started his repetitions…and within a few minutes there was barely a sound in the gym. The Marines had recovered themselves before he was finished, and they left him alone afterwards. Because none of them knew what to say to a ‘wimpy’ scientist who could bench more than all but two or three of them. 

Rodney had never figured out that last part, and it didn’t occur to him now. He was thinking that muscles like the ones he’d just realized he had meant strength; strength meant he could Do Things. The sort of things other strong men did. The sort of things Sheppard could do. 

And he knew that Sheppard would not run back to the ‘Gate for help. Sheppard would take out the soldiers and rescue his teammate and then they’d both go back to the ‘Gate together. 

A little voice in the back of Rodney’s head tried to remind him that Sheppard was also a highly-trained soldier – covert-ops trained, even – and that meant Sheppard was not only strong but a total badass, something Rodney was not. Rodney told the little voice to shut up. He knew he wasn’t Sheppard, but he also knew that he could do some of the things he’d seen Sheppard do, because he was a genius and he’d seen Sheppard do them over and over again so therefore he knew how to do them too even though he’d never tried to do them before. He’d never even been expected to do anything like that before, he’d had Sheppard – and, to a lesser extent, Ford and Teyla – to do those things for him. They didn’t expect him to do physical things. Rodney was surprised at the sudden flash of anger he felt over that. He was just as capable as they were, he just was going to prove it. 

He was going to take out these soldiers and rescue Sheppard. 

He figured out the best way to approach the building and then snuck over there, making it to the door and then cautiously peeking in. Nobody was there. He went inside, being as quiet as he could. His gun was slung over his shoulder, because firing the gun right now would not be a good thing to do. He peeked in the next doorway, and found one of the soldiers standing there with his back to him. Hmm. The man hadn’t heard him, and he was just inches away. 

Rodney closed those inches and wrapped his right arm around the man’s throat, pulling back and squeezing the way he’d seen Sheppard do a hundred times. The soldier choked but couldn’t yell, and he clawed at Rodney’s arm; Rodney squeezed harder, giving the little twisting pull at the end that he’d also seen Sheppard do, and the man went limp. Rodney dragged him into the front room, out of immediate sight, and went back in. 

There were apparently only three soldiers, because after Rodney put down the second one he found the last one standing in front of the chair they had Sheppard secured to, taunting him and waving some kind of thing around. It looked like a cattle-prod, which made Rodney better understand the yell he’d heard earlier, which also made Rodney angry. He rushed up behind the man and used the same technique he’d used on the other two, quicker this time because now he’d had some practice and he was perfecting his technique. The man dropped like a rock, and Rodney raised an eyebrow at the openmouthed major. “What, you expected me to leave you here and run back to the ‘Gate like a coward? I’m offended, Major, really.” 

Sheppard blinked at him. He seemed speechless, which Rodney wasn’t sure whether to be happy or worried about, so instead of sorting that out he found the keys to the manacles they’d been using and let Sheppard go. He even pulled him up out of the chair and then held onto him to make sure he was steady on his feet – again, things that strong men did because they could. Sheppard was just staring at him, still, and Rodney frowned. “Major…John, are you okay? I thought I got in here before they could hurt you too much, but…” 

“No, I’m fine,” Sheppard managed. Now he was looking back and forth between Rodney and the soldier on the ground. “I…where did you learn to do that?!” 

Rodney shrugged, feeling a little bit hurt at the incredulity in the other man’s voice. “I watched you, you do that a lot. And I lift a lot of weights, it’s relaxing and it keeps Beckett off my case about not getting enough exercise.” 

“I didn’t know that,” Sheppard told him, and it sounded enough like an apology that Rodney took it as one and stopped being offended – _he_ hadn’t noticed, so he really shouldn’t expect that anyone else would have either. “You…took care of all three of them?” 

Rodney shrugged again. “Yes. It was easier than I thought it would be, just one squeeze and they were out. How long does it usually last?” 

Sheppard opened his mouth, and then closed it again and shook his head. “It sort of…depends,” he managed. He crouched down beside the fallen soldier – checking to see if he was close to waking up, Rodney assumed. Then he stood up and collected his gear, putting it back on, and almost as an afterthought taking some other things off the downed soldier too while he was at it, some of which he gave to Rodney. And then he waved for Rodney to follow him out into the front room where he checked the two other downed soldiers the same way he had the first one. Rodney stood guard at the doorway until the major was finished, and if Sheppard had a slightly odd, surprised look on his face the scientist put it down to surprise that he, Rodney McKay, had managed to take down all three soldiers and pull off the rescue by himself. “So, will they be coming after us any time soon?” he asked as the two of them made their way out of the building. 

The odd look made a reappearance, but only briefly, and then Sheppard shook his head. “No,” he said, sounding sure about it. “No, they won’t.” And then he clapped Rodney on the shoulder, harder than he usually did. “You did good, Rodney. You did really, really good.” 

Rodney was proud all the way back to the ‘Gate. 

Back on Atlantis, however, things got…weird. At first he put it down to his new self-awareness, a new perspective. But that wasn’t really it. Their debriefing with Weir had been almost surreal, and Sheppard had refused to let anyone else listen in – in fact, he’d closed the door to Weir’s office behind them, something he usually didn’t do. And he’d made Rodney give his version of what had happened first, only chiming in when it was necessary. Weir had been very surprised, to say the least, but had come to terms with it when Sheppard backed the story up and had also told Rodney he’d done very well. And then she’d said that she needed to talk to Major Sheppard about something else and had told him he could go. Sheppard had made an eye-rolling reference to some unimportant – to him, apparently, anyway – staff discipline problem and had waved Rodney out. “Go play,” he’d advised. “At least one of us should be having fun.” 

Rodney grinned and left. He put up his gear, changed clothes, showered and ate, and then headed down to his lab and went back to work on his latest project. He stayed happily engrossed in what he was doing for several hours, until he received a not entirely unexpected summons from Lieutenant Ford that he was late for his training session. He wasn’t supposed to have training on days when they’d been out in the field, but Ford almost always called him in anyway. 

Ford, Rodney had decided long ago, was a jerk. He reached across his worktable and felt the muscles flex against the fabric of his t-shirt…and he smiled. He was tired and still kind of keyed-up from the mission, but maybe one of these days he should show Lieutenant Jerk-Who-Was-Smaller-Than-Rodney exactly what he could do. 

He made it down to the training room about fifteen minutes later and did his best not to roll his eyes through Ford’s usual diatribe about the necessity of scientists – he made it sound like a dirty word, too – taking their modified field training seriously. Ford always made a point of the training being ‘modified’ and not nearly as tough as real military training. The lieutenant finally wound down and informed Rodney that they’d be sparring today, and they’d barely gotten started when a voice roared, “ATTENTION!” 

Ford snapped to it so fast that Rodney actually heard his spine pop. He himself didn’t even jump – he was used to having military people bark things at each other all around him, and since it didn’t have anything to do with him he’d stopped responding to it. He did turn to look, though, and saw Sheppard standing in the doorway. Hmm. Sheppard wasn’t breathing hard…but for some reason Rodney got the feeling he’d been running. Why would he have been running? Because of the not-supposed-to-be-scheduled training session? Rodney supposed that was possible, but it wouldn’t really make sense. If Sheppard wanted to discipline Ford for being a jerk, he’d do it in private. So what could it be… 

Sheppard stalked into the room, right up to Ford, and glared down at the younger man. “Lieutenant, what is this?” he demanded. “You know there is no scheduled training when we’ve been in the field.” 

Ford started to relax, saw the look on his team leader’s face and instead tensed up even more. “Sir, I…I didn’t think about that, sir.” 

“Didn’t think about it, right.” Sheppard cocked his head. “And just how many times haven’t you thought about it?” When Ford didn’t immediately come up with an answer, the major turned around. “Rodney?” 

Rodney shrugged. “Every time you weren’t with one of us or someone wasn’t in Beckett’s clutches.” 

Sheppard nodded. “That’s what I thought. I apologize for my officer, Dr. McKay, he was abusing his position.” He turned back to Ford, who tensed up again. “He _won’t_ be doing it again. Sergeant Bates will be your new training officer from now on.” 

That was when Rodney realized that Bates was standing just inside the door. The tall Marine walked over to stand beside him, looking very thoughtful about something and much less like he’d been sucking on lemons than Rodney usually thought he did. “Doctor McKay,” Bates greeted him – respectfully, to Rodney’s surprise. “I’m looking forward to working with you, sir.” 

Rodney wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so he just nodded and the two of them turned their attention back to Sheppard and the still-at-attention Ford. “Started off with sparring, then, no stretching or anything?” Sheppard was asking. 

“I always warm up, Major…” 

“I meant Dr. McKay, not you,” Sheppard cut him off. “So you were all warmed up and ready to kick the crap out of somebody, but you didn’t feel the need to let your opponent get warmed up before you started, I see.” He grinned, hard and slightly feral, and Ford grew noticeably tenser. “Well if that’s the way you feel about it, Lieutenant, I suppose I could accommodate you – especially since I’m just back to the city myself and I haven’t had a chance to get warmed up either. The kind of odds you like, right? Okay, let’s go.” 

Ford stared at him in shock, then fell clumsily out of his stiff stance when Sheppard took a half-playful swipe at him. He regained his footing, swallowed, and started to get into position. 

He never got to finish. Sheppard had him down before he even saw it coming. And then the major let him up and did it again. And again. And again. 

The last time, however, Sheppard went down with him, locking him into a loose sleeper hold, and Ford looked surprised and more than a little scared when the older man didn’t immediately let him out of it. “This is one you never bothered to teach him, isn’t it?” Sheppard hissed in his ear. “You were too busy being an asshole because he’s a civilian and he’s smarter than you.” The arm around Ford’s throat tightened. “Well guess what? He’s even smarter than that, because he’d seen me do this and he figured it out all by himself .” More pressure, enough that Ford felt his airway constrict uncomfortably. “The problem was, since no one had _shown_ him how to do it, he didn’t know how much was too much and he just gave it all he had.” Sheppard suddenly lifted his head and looked right at Rodney. “McKay, how much do you bench these days?” 

Rodney was startled by the suddenness of the question, but he shrugged it away. Sheppard was always doing things he didn’t understand. “I’m not really sure, we had to leave the free weights back on Earth. I just fiddled with the machine we brought until it felt right.” 

Sheppard nodded. “Whatever works,” was his only comment. “We might have to look around for some sort of Ancient gym or something, you’re up as high as our machine can go.” Another squeeze cut off a gasp from Ford. “Oh, while I’m thinking about it, you might want to take a look at this hold I have on the lieutenant here. See the way I’ve got my arm?” Rodney closed in to look. “It’s all in the angle. If all you want is to put him out, pull back like I am now and hold it. If you want him down for good, pull back all the way to crush his throat, or pull and twist to break his neck.” 

“I see what you mean.” Rodney was nodding. “I can see how you’re just compressing his throat enough to…” He straightened suddenly, turning pale. “Just enough?” 

Sheppard stood up and dropped the gasping Ford to the floor, stepping over him. He kept his eyes locked with Rodney’s. “Yeah,” he confirmed quietly. “Just enough.” 

Rodney took a step back. “Those guards…won’t be following anybody, will they?” 

When Sheppard shook his head, Rodney turned and bolted from the room. “You stay here, and make sure the lieutenant understands why we interrupted his ‘training session’,” he barked at Bates, and then hurried after his teammate. 

He caught up with him around the corner, in the bathroom. Rodney’s hands were clenched around the edge of the sink, white knuckled, and his eyes were squeezed shut. He was very obviously trying not to be sick. “Let them out,” Sheppard ordered. Startled blue eyes popped open, staring. “Do it,” he insisted, pointing at the sink. “You choke them out now or they’ll roll around in your stomach for weeks.” He closed the distance between them, put a hand on one shoulder that was a lot more solid than he’d noticed it was the day before. “It’s okay. We all go through this.” 

Rodney threw up, repeatedly, until he couldn’t throw up any more. Sheppard helped him halt the dry heaves, settled him against the far wall and wiped his face off with cool water. “I…I killed…” 

“You killed a bunch of guys who were going to torture me – and who would have tortured you if they’d caught you,” Sheppard told him. “They were going to…take their time about it. They told me so.” 

Blue eyes turned to him. “You believed them?” 

It was an honest question, not an accusation. “Yeah. They’d done it before, I could tell. I think the last guy they caught may have been Genii.” 

Rodney shuddered, leaning his head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. “I…I didn’t know I was…I mean, it just came to me, all of a sudden. I just thought…I thought that since I was stronger than you I was just faster at it.” 

“And you were right.” Sheppard didn’t have a problem with it. “You did good.” 

A blink. “I killed three men.” 

Sheppard copied his head-back pose with a sigh. “I’ve killed a hell of a lot more than that.” 

“I…I was thinking about how someday I’d…I’d ‘surprise’ Lieutenant Ford, show him what I…what I could do.” 

“He would have been surprised, all right.” Sheppard shifted on the tile. “Once I realized he’d called you in for a training session, I knew you might think of that – I would have. So I grabbed Bates and hauled ass down there.” 

This time the sigh was from Rodney. “Thanks. He may be an asshole…but I don’t want to kill him.” 

“I knew that too. And I’m not saying it would have served him right or anything…but if it had come to that, it would have been his fuck-up, not yours. He was your training officer, it was his duty to know what you were capable of.” Sheppard smiled slightly. “You’ll like working with Bates, he’s really good. I do my training with Bates.” 

That got Rodney to look at him. “You do?” 

Sheppard smiled at the ceiling. “Yeah. He’s good.” He glanced sideways. “And as long as I can kick his ass, I know I’m in good shape.” 

Rodney’s eyes went back to the ceiling, but he laughed, just a little. He didn’t feel better, not exactly, but being accepted into the circle of other strong men made him feel a little less afraid of the strength – and its darker consequences – that had come as such a surprise to him earlier that day. With Sheppard and Bates helping him, he knew he wouldn’t be surprised again.   


End file.
